Notation Express for Dorico 4 information

Updated April 24, 2022

Thank you for using Notation Express or Notation Express XL for Dorico!

You may have seen the exciting news that Dorico 4 was released recently. If you haven’t heard about it yet, please read our extensive review on Scoring Notes.

We are very excited to announce the immediate release of Notation Express and Notation Express XL for Dorico 4!

Completely rebuilt for Dorico 4

Notation Express for Dorico 4 has been completely rebuilt. Every button has been re-programmed to take advantage of Dorico 4’s ability to receive commands directly from Stream Deck, instead of relying upon a custom key command profile as the intermediary.

What does this mean?

You may have noticed that earlier versions of Notation Express installed a custom key command (shortcut) profile. In Dorico 4 it is no longer necessary to rely on these commands.

This is a major change for the following reasons:

  • Reclaim your shortcuts – You can now reclaim all of the keyboard shortcuts for your own use, as you like, without them being reserved by Notation Express
  • Cross-platform support – One Notation Express profile works for both Mac and Windows, so you can use the same profile on both operating systems (no need to purchase separate versions)
  • Multi-language support – Notation Express is now supported in all languages, so you don’t need to switch to English to use it in Dorico (the icon labels will still only be in English, for now)
  • Faster – The direct connection to Dorico makes Notation Express significantly more responsive, because it passes commands directly to Dorico instead of invoking a series of macros that may involve opening and typing into a popover, for example
  • Control Dorico in the background – The direct connection to Dorico means that you can use your Stream Deck to control Dorico even when another application is running in the foreground

Update path

Because of the amount of work involved in transitioning to this new protocol, and the benefits it will bring for the future, NE/NEXL for Dorico 4 is a paid update for existing users, as follows:

If you purchased the NE/NEXL bundle, you are eligible for the same update pricing as above; there is no further discount, but you are not obligated to purchase both updated products (you may update separately if you like).

Although we are not directly affiliated with Steinberg, we have decided to follow their example, so that anyone who purchased Notation Express or Notation Express XL for Dorico on or after August 25, 2021 will receive a free update to the product that they purchased for Dorico 4.

Get the update

  1. Simply go to the Notation Express for Dorico or Notation Express XL for Dorico product page, and add the product to your cart.
  2. Ensure that you are logged into your Notation Central account, so that the correct discounted pricing is applied. (Please be aware that when you add the product to your cart, the discount will not be immediately reflected, but will appear once you begin the checkout process.)
  3. Purchase Notation Express, read the documentation or watch the installation video for the quick and easy setup instructions.
  4. Enjoy Notation Express!

Please consult the documentation carefully for installation instructions, or watch this video.

Please be sure to uninstall the existing Notation Express plugin and install the new plugin.

You should also remove the previous Notation Express profile, although if you have made any customizations to it, you may wish to make note of your customizations for reference before you remove it.

A user-generated forum topic has surfaced on Steinberg’s site where these issues are being discussed, and you may find additional helpful information there.

Further steps

Before we start adding support for the new music features in Dorico 4, we wanted to make sure that the existing commands worked as expected using this new protocol. Therefore, the first release of Notation Express for Dorico 4 supports the same features as Notation Express for Dorico 3.5.

In the future, we will introduce support for additional features exclusive to Dorico 4.

Thank you again for using Notation Express!